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Having appreciated my colleague Aleks’ Yankelevich’s creative use of a “food” metaphor to explain an important aspect of economic analysis, I thought it fitting, on the day of oral arguments in the legal challenge to the FCC’s Open Internet Order, to consider another effective use of such a metaphor: Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s dissent in the Brand X case. Whereas the majority opinion in that case deferred to an earlier FCC ruling that Internet access was an “information” rather than a “telecommunication” service, Scalia–joined by two liberal justices, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David Souter–argued that the majority’s view was akin to accepting a claim by […]

The Quello Center is very pleased to host a visit to MSU by Dr David Bray, the CIO of the FCC, and a recent recipient of an Eisenhower Fellow. He will be speaking at the College of Communication Arts & Sciences on Monday, 21 September 2015, in Room 191 at 3pm, giving one of this year’s Quello Lectures. David has spoken recently on related topics, such as on how to reshape public service IT for the new digital era. His talk on Monday promises to be of special value to students considering careers in the public service. The title of […]

In the past week or so I’ve seen several articles that remind me how important the Quello Center’s empirically-grounded study of net neutrality impacts is for clarifying what these impacts will be—especially since net neutrality is one of those policy topics where arguments are often driven by ideology and/or competing financial interests. As far as I can tell, this series of articles began with an August 25 piece written by economist Hal Singer and published by Forbes under the following headline: Does The Tumble In Broadband Investment Spell Doom For The FCC’s Open Internet Order? Per his Forbes bio, Singer […]

This video records a memorial event for Professor Mark Levy, which was held at the 2015 Meeting of the International Communication Association (ICA) in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Mark Levy Memorial from Quello Center on Vimeo. Mark served on the faculty of the College of Communication Arts & Sciences at MSU for more than 15 years. He joined MSU in 1999 to Chair the Department of Telecommunication and Information Studies (renamed as the Department of Media and Information) until 2006. The Mark Levy ICT4D Scholarship Fund has been set up to honor his legacy, since the role of the Internet […]

After thinking and writing about the benefits of fiber-to-the-premise (FTTP) networks for a number of years, I’m happy to report that I’ve finally joined the small but growing population of U.S. households connected to the Internet via fiber networks delivering symmetrical gigabit speeds. I’m getting service from LightSpeed, a Lansing-based company deploying its network on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood basis (see this map for more details on the status of its network and service rollout). The installation happened yesterday (the fiber drop was installed the day before). It went smoothly, with Jeremy and Chris connecting the drop to a fiber network interface in […]

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the design and management of society’s core infrastructure systems (which I define broadly to include things like healthcare, education, housing and “money”) in an era marked by several important trends (for reasons suggested below, I refer to this as the “digital anthropocene”): substantial (and currently destructive) impacts of human activities on natural systems, a planetary phase referred to as the Anthropocene; continued and arguably mounting evidence that the status-quo dynamics within our dominant political and economic systems are aggravating rather than reducing inequalities in wealth and related factors; the dramatic expansion in scope, content […]

As I explained in an earlier blog post, I believe potential risks associated with our ever-more-intensive use of wireless devices, and the expanding body of research suggesting such risks do exist, are being unwisely ignored in our rush to enjoy the benefits of these technologies. As that earlier post suggested, I see a need for: 1) A much-expanded program of research focused on understanding and mitigating EMF-related health risks, especially for vulnerable populations; 2) A fact-based and respectful discussion of research and public policy issues related to such risks. Given my interest in this subject, I thought I might learn […]

Steve Wildman is about to depart from the Quello Center, the Department of Media and Information, Michigan State University and Michigan to retire in the mountains of Colorado. We expect Steve to continue as an emeritus member of our Advisory Board, and teach from a distance for the department. And while we have already had a celebration of his work at MSU, we should say more about his contributions to the Quello Center as his Odyssey continues. First, thanks are once again due for the role Steve has played as founding director of the Quello Center. He started the center […]

In a recent blog post I discussed a critique of today’s “smart meters” that focused on the technology’s shortcomings as a step toward creating a “smart grid” that reduces climate change risks and other negative impacts associated with our current carbon-intensive energy systems. In another recent post I discussed the need for more research on EMF health effects. In this post I’m going to revisit the subject of smart meters from a perspective informed by both of those prior posts. One of my goals is to use smart meters as a specific example of how, when making decisions about large-scale technology […]

I’ve long been an enthusiastic supporter of using information and communication technology to support healthcare, education and political and economic empowerment. My interest dates back to 1982, when I wrote a graduate school paper entitled The Human Development Network. At that time, cable TV and desktop PCs were the new technologies of the day, the first brick-sized portable cellphones had yet to hit the market, and the closest thing to smartphones and “wearables” were found in the fictional worlds of Star Trek and Dick Tracy. Given my longstanding interest in beneficial uses of technology, it’s exciting to see today’s explosion […]